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Thanks for replying. I feel that both of your responses have been helpful. I guess my fear is that, whilst I know all of these emotions need to come out and not be stifled, I'm in danger of becoming abusive myself; so I stifle the anger more because I haven't found a way in which to deal with it, then it only takes one person to say the wrong thing for me to suddenly explode.
The irony is that whilst the childlike vulnerability does come out when I feel attacked, it's usually my own angry outburst that takes me into the childlike state - which I then start the process of self soothing and jumping back and forth between self soothing and angry.

But in some ways this is progress, because I couldn't quite put into words what this was before, because its like there is a clear cut line between every grouping of emotions/identity and i couldn't explain it. But i spoke to my OT straight away when i realised this whole thing and he took note of it and said it would be good to mention to my psychologist when i start trauma therapy in a couple of weeks.

i'm forever grateful for this explanation though. it really makes me feel a bit more sane knowing that it is literally just part of the process. i hope you both find healing in your journeys too and thank you so much for the support. honestly, no-one in my life quite understands and I've been so desperate for someone to really know , so that when i struggle communicating it they just get it. thanks again <3

i wasn't sure where to post this, but I was wondering if anyone else can shed some light on this.

I have been living in my own place for about a year now, and its the 1st year in my whole life (that i'm consciously aware of) that I have been free from abuse. I thought things would get better and in some respects they have. I have more control over my anxiety and depression etc and now I can focus more of my energies on dealing with the C-PTSD and stuff.

the struggle I have is that I feel like some of the time I feel like i'm able to be the person I want to be, but I feel at a loss of identity. I feel that as I the dust has settled and the anxiety has quietened, I can see that the two or more versions of myself are very clearly different. It's so hard to explain, because it's not like i'm experiencing emotions in this one version of myself. for example, the person I choose to be every day is kind, loving and caring. I try to be patient. and I understand that i will feel negative emotions but they are sooo far in the other direction that i feel as though that side of me is a different person entirely. i am either one person (kind, loving, patient caring.) or i lose my rag and i'm a completely different person (aggressive, angry, hateful, almost borderline abusive.. i feel like i have become the person who abused me for all of those years).
OR i'm like a child - vulnerable, afraid, disconnected, confused, i don't understand.

When people rattle the cage (ie touch a nerve/'trigger' the ptsd) its like i flip from being the person i choose to be, and uncontrollably switch between the other two, back and forth for what seems like a lifetime until i tire myself out and fall asleep.

And i can go for a really long time being the positive version of myself that i choose to be, but as soon as stress comes my way or someone tries to dig around in that emotional lockbox (that i know is there and i know it exists i just don't know how to access it without becoming these two other versions of myself) that's when i flip out.

but like i said, as time has gone by and i have dealt with certain aspects of this issue, it's become clearer that i don't experience these emotions as one whole person but as different versions of myself. I feel at a loss of identity because the other two emotions don't feel like me - or i don't WANT them to be me, but at the same time, when i start experiencing them again, i start to question my positive identity and if that is really me...
which then makes it harder for me to physically identify as myself, because i look in the mirror and i don't recognise who i am, and it doesn't matter what i do to my physical image, i don't identify as anyone...

does this even make sense? can someone please help! thanks in advance :/

@joyful @sanmagic @radical
Thank you so much for responding to this! It's really comforting having input from others who have gone through similar things. I find it hard because i go through periods of this so sometimes are better than others. maybe i'll have a couple of really good weeks, but the effort that i put in to having those good weeks drains me mentally and so i crash and get really bad again, resulting in really bad weeks instead of trying to keep it on a level.

i agree with both opinions, that when i need the isolation i should take it and not worry about depending on my partner. i try my hardest not to depend on him too much because i do guilt trip myself about it a lot - i know it can be equally as isolating for him if i rely on him over long periods of time; however, he always tells me he wants to be there for me at the worst times because i literally have no one else that i can feel this way freely with, without having a lot of the symptoms denied or 'normalised' (all of my friends are at uni, or live too far away and can't drive here etc. and family sort of swept this under the rug so as not to have the abuse happening at home as severely again) .

i agree with the healthy eating and exercise. a lot of foods i haven't been able to eat because i get severe IBS and Acid Reflux, but its taken me a long time to get all of my eating healthy for my body (as in i can't eat a lot of beans, legumes, onions, peppers, certain dairy products etc so it prevents me from trying new things, because if i have one thing that affects the IBS and Acid Reflux, then it affects my whole mental attitude. i try not to, but having a complete lack of control over my life for too many years has made me like a control freak down to every last detail of my small existence, so when i get ill i REALLY panic). I exercise about 5 days a week as well as trying to walk and do yoga daily, and i have been on SSRIs in the past but they didn't agree with me. I have 25mg of quetiapine, but i'm only small and even that dose seems to knock me out cold for at least a day or two, so when i have really bad times i take 1/4 to 1/2 a pill and it takes the edge off things, even if it means sleeping for half the week.

i think thats the most tiresome thing.  I've missed out on a lot of things because i choose to do things that will be good for me so i can get better. i'll probably sound really jealous saying this, but I've always taken care of my health: i never drink or do drugs or smoke, and i work so hard at doing all the right things all the therapists etc have told me over the years, yet i barely get by; it angers me that there are people my age who completely trash their bodies and their lives, yet they are still able to travel and work and have kids. It angers me that i choose not to do these things when it would be so easy to just drink myself silly or get a drug addiction so i don't have to feel anymore.
I'm constantly putting in the effort 100% of the time and I've sacrificed so much, including what people think of me - because most people don't understand. I kind of have to tell people that i can't show up because of anxiety, because delving into this stuff is too much for most people to handle, so they just switch off and think it's drama or something. (or they try to trivialise it "everyone gets that every now and then" "we've ALL been abused, everyone has been abused")

My occupational therapist told me to set goals, like long term goals, medium term and short term goals, then break them down further into achievable steps; and I've been doing this, and I push myself daily because i know the direction I want to go in. But it frustrates me seeing friends and other people deciding to do these things on a whim, and achieving them in a matter of weeks because they have the money and the mental capacity to do that stuff. Whereas ive got my goals and then its like, to do that i need to have qualification 'X', to do that i need money, to have that i need to work, and to do THAT i need to be well enough - well enough meaning: being able to brush my teeth twice a day every day, to feed myself properly, shower, leave the house etc at BAD times as well as the good times. At the moment, that's not happening.. its got better, but when the bad times hit like the past week or so, it's been really hard. the one thing that keeps me going is hitting the gym and talking to my partner (strength training and gaining physical strength makes me feel less vulnerable.. it's something i used to do as a kid. i convinced myself that if i could run faster, or had more muscle then at least the violence side would be less painful or last for a shorter amount of time).

anyway, sorry for the long message again! i feel like i'm ranting, but i wanted to divulge further on a few points that were brought up in your comments to give a better picture of what I've been doing. Thanks again for your replies, and sorry for the mish-mash of info and grammatical errors. I've literally been writing it as it comes before I forget.

http://outofthefog.net/C-PTSD/forum/Smileys/classic/blowup.gif

I don't post here very often - I think I posted here once! I find it very hard to talk properly about this stuff even though i'm quite a blunt and outspoken person.  I have talked flippantly about this stuff with a few people in person, but never deeper than scratching the surface; and even when I do talk a bit deeper about it I feel like it's not coming close to trying to describe everything.

Anyway, I grew up with domestic abuse - my dad was physically and mentally abusive. We always assumed he had a mental health issue of his own, though he never really went to see anyone about it. I'm not sure why i'm more affected than my mother or my brother. My sister never had anything bad directed at her at all. I seemed to get the worst of it all. I'd always been anxious anyway, so it just made things much worse. That coupled with being friends with some of the wrong people made it much worse.
When I was 16 I had a boyfriend who lived quite far away. He was terrible and emotionally abusive/emotionally blackmailed me a lot of the time. The only justification I had for staying with him is that I thought I loved him - but looking back at it now, I understand that I had a choice of staying at home and being physically and mentally abused, or going out and staying with that boyfriend and being treated somewhat normal (I thought it was normal but it wasn't.). I ended up getting pregnant and I had a miscarriage a couple of weeks after my 18th birthday.
during this period I was basically being thrown out of the house and rejected by everyone I know. I grew up in a Christian household, so that made it worse because everyone pushed me away further in the church and at home.

around this time I met my now fiancé, Alex and we have been together for nearly three years. he's about 7 years older than I am and he's very kind, supportive and loving.
I had no choice but to continue living at home with my family because of financial situations - I kept losing jobs because of my mental health - and the abuse continued. it wasn't until about 7 months ago that Alex and I were able to find a place to rent and move out together because the situation had become too volatile at home.
while some things have gotten better, many things have become worse.

I've become very dependent on my fiancé, and he's so supportive I feel like he is the only person I really trust, and even then that's at a stretch! I struggle with coping and I am extremely isolated. it's at the point where I can't do anything unless there is someone with me, and so I get very frustrated because I can never do things when i'm ready to do them... I have to wait until he (or mum or whoever) is ready to meet me and do things. I end up having outbursts and i feel like i'm not in control.
he isn't able to see his friends much because i struggle to cope. I can't explain it very well. At the moment he's probably the only person/thing that makes living with CPTSD slightly bearable and when he's gone, i struggle to cope without him. So i came up with a resolve for myself that if/when he does go out with his friends that i need to learn to cope on my own without him. unintentionally i push him away or i struggle to pretend to be happy when i'm really breaking down, but this always comes across as though i'm pushing him away or that i don't want him to see anyone else - which isn't true, i'm always trying to encourage him to meet up with his friends and that i don't want him to feel like he has to stay with me, i want him to have a life outside of my illness. 

But it's hard now because i lock myself away from the world so that i don't hurt anyone. I honestly can't tell when i'm doing it because I've lived this way so long that it's become ingrained in me that this is the way people are - especially when these abusive attitudes have been inflicted upon me by more than one person. So i hide myself away because i don't want to hurt anyone, and i feel like i'm still ruining Alex's life because he's the one person i can't run away from.

to be honest i don't even know if any of this is making any sense, but thanks in advance to anyone who manages to read this through to the end!

i just feel very lost, because i'm feeling very tired and i don't mean fatigue tired. A lot of the time i feel as though i'm ready to go. i know it sounds over dramatic but i'm just waiting for life to end because i'm so tired of how relentless this pain/hurt is.

@kxcobra @threeroses @Meursault
thanks for replying and sharing some of the things you use to help with everything. my biggest worry was that I wrote too much and no one would respond so thank you! it feels like a weight has been [slightly] lifted knowing there are people who understand.
I guess for so long I have wanted to be free that now it has i'm lost and find myself doing the things my dad used to do to us (mentally beating myself up, not allowing myself to relax with anything, being ocd about everything etc) . At the same time I feel like I've lost my drive because my entire life I've been doing things for the eventuality of getting physically or mentally abused again, so now I don't really know what I do enjoy, or I feel like i'm slacking off by not training because I could get hurt again and be unprepared.
and what makes it worse is that I've not been working for a long time and a lot of people look down on that because they say you're a scrounger or lazy etc. so I never allow myself to relax because I feel judged all the time. grr!!!

anyway, I see my therapist soon so I will discuss some of the suggestions you have made like trying to find things I enjoy etc. and thanks again for responding and welcoming me. I hope at some point I can help you as much as you've helped me today <3 <3 

first off I just want to apologize in advance for the long drawn out post. I've spoken about these things to a few people in my life but they just don't understand.

i'm 20 years old, half Filipino (half English) and about 5 months ago I finally managed to move in with my partner of 2 and a half years. before this i lived at home with my family and suffered domestic abuse for pretty much the entire 20 years of my life - in fact, if you count my dad kicking my mum when she was pregnant with me, then it really has been the entirety of my life. since moving out i have tried to forgive my dad and am at least civil with him because i know holding on to hate is kinda like the saying - drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.  but i feel like such an angry person.
the more i understand my own mental health, i can see now that my dad does not know how to deal with stress. he has a short fuse and we would spend hours of the day being tormented by him shouting abuse and often losing his cool and hitting/shoving us around or throwing stuff at us or throwing us into stuff. he said that if that were really true - if he really did beat us up - then we wouldn't be standing. yet i remember so vividly every event.
I've always been an anxious person anyway, but i feel like it was made much worse by the abuse. but if anything ever kicked off and it was with one of my siblings or my mum then i would be quick to get in the way and take the abuse instead because it hurt more to see them hurt. it was worsened by the fact that my parents are Christian, so my dad would quote bible verses at us telling us what bad people we were. i seemed to get the worst of everything though, maybe because my brother and sister went out to friends but i was too anxious to go to someone elses house and have their dads treat me this way instead (that was my genuine belief).
In school i had a slew of friends who just didn't care about me at all and i seemed to attract people that would just walk all over me.
at 16 i ended up in an emotionally abusive long distance relationship which lasted for two years. I knew that it was wrong to be told how to dress, who i could be friends with, how i should spend my money .. or maybe it was being told that i couldn't end the relationship, but he wanted to screw other people. anyway, i always thought that relationship was at least better than the domestic situation - even if i ended up alone in a strange city at 2 in the morning waiting for a train. a few weeks before my 18th i found out i was pregnant which made both the home situation AND the relationship more volatile, but i ended up having a miscarriage. thankfully i managed to end the relationship and somehow landed into another. Thankfully it was and has been a good relationship and my partner really takes care of me and protects me (which was something i never really expected from a man, given my previous experiences). unfortunately though, after my miscarriage i had a friend who was also pregnant and she made it a daily occurance to make sure i remembered i miscarried and brought me to tears with awful remarks about it. she ended up abandoning the baby with her partner and i was left bitter and hurt, as well as having lies being spread about me and my mental health by said friend.
fast forward to last august. i had a breakdown and shaved my head. the whole time i felt like i was a bad person because people denied everything that happened. i continually asked for help, but the people at church thought it wasn't their business to sort our family problems out. i'd had a slew of bad jobs - situations much the same, i allowed people to push me around, sexually harass me, allowed them to make racist remarks, and getting to breaking point where i couldn't tell what was real or not. hearing screaming and feeling like i'd been shaken up severely all the time. in October i was diagnosed with complex ptsd. i haven't self harmed since December, but i have really been struggling.

here i am, in my own house with a loving partner and i find myself feeling worse than ever. i used to have an extreme addiction to violence - watching horror/violent movies made me feel more normal because it's what I've always known - and i used to smash stuff up in anger. but i find now i have left that place, i am less resilient to these things. i can't even watch a moderately aggressive action movie without sometimes getting triggered. i feel angry all the time. i obsess over things - EVERYTHING. I've struggled with disordered eating for years... i pretty much tick every box on the symptoms description list for C-PTSD. i thought i got better.
despite the psychologist saying it wouldn't be productive to say i would fully recover, i had about 2 months of feeling good. but i'm here because i feel i can't supress how i feel anymore. i have an extreme dependency on my partner but i don't want to put so much pressure on him.
i'm tired of pretending to the rest of the world that i'm ok and that i'm recovering, because deep down i just feel angry all the time. mainly because my mother denies all of this, my dad denies all of this, and my brother is so laid back that he has been able to just let it go.
i want to let it go but i can't, and my therapist isn't any help. i feel like everyone i talk to just doesn't understand. they think i'm just going through a phase because i'm a young person. like they can sweep what happened under the carpet. but i remember everything and it's shaped the way i deal with things and i just feel so lost.

Anyway, if you got this far, thank you for at least taking the time to read all of this. i feel like i can't really explain my ordeal without explaining a watered down version of all of it.

i guess i just want to know how other people cope. how do you live life? how do you get past the initial stage where you aren't in that place anymore? i never thought i would be out of that place, and now that i am, i don't know what to do?!

thanks again

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